by Glyn Johns
We returned to Denmark, checked into a hotel, and Stu got on the phone to the promoter in Hamburg to let him know that he had a bit of a problem. The concert was the following night. We had all the gear and it transpired that the stamp in our passports meant that we could never return to Germany.
Apparently, there were phone calls back and forth all night long between the promoter and the customs post, until finally Stu received a call from the promoter saying that if I was prepared to apologize to the commanding officer of the post in precise terms for what I had said to the immigration officer then he would let us back into Germany.
Now, I had long hair. Stu had an ordinary haircut. In fact, you would never even know Stu was a musician of any sort by looking at him. So when he gave me this message we both thought that it was because of my appearance that I was accused of being the troublemaker. I had assumed that we had been thrown out because of Stu’s argument and fight in the customs area. The more we thought about it the more confused we became. So Stu rang the promoter back and asked if he was sure that it was me who had to apologize and not him. Five minutes later we got a call back to say it was definitely me, the one with the long hair who had called the immigration officer a German bastard! Then I remembered that when we first arrived and the immigration guy sent us back to the end of the other queue, I had turned to Stu and muttered, “Kraut . . .” I have no idea how he heard me, if in fact he heard me at all, since the windows of the van were closed. Perhaps he was good at reading lips. Evidently that was what the whole episode had been about.
It was still very early in the morning. We returned to the ferry and took the short crossing back to Germany and in no time at all I was standing in this guy’s office, where I was required to say, “I am sorry I called your officer a German bastard.” Which wasn’t too difficult at all.
We drove to Hamburg to meet up with the band and then the thirty miles on to Bremen, arriving in plenty of time for the concert. The auditorium was full of armed police, both backstage and out front. It was obvious that they were expecting trouble and were determined to stop anything before it happened. It was most unsettling. There was a line of police all around the interior of the auditorium and along the front of the stage with their rifles shouldered. Anytime a kid moved in the audience they were jumped on and roughly removed by a gang of police officers. Mick made several attempts at trying to calm things down, telling the police to be cool and not to be so violent. He had to be careful, as the crowd would have taken very little encouragement to riot as a result of the bully tactics that were being employed. He went up in my estimation enormously that night. He dealt with a tinderbox situation quite brilliantly.
Anyone who has been to a Rolling Stones concert will know that the experience is about as stimulating to all your senses as great rock and roll is ever likely to get. It is almost impossible to sit still with that many decibels of hit after hit being beamed at you, along with the realization that you are actually in the same room with THEM, or HIM, depending on your point of view, and they are playing just for you. So it can be very difficult to control your excitement. In fact, with most people, the whole idea of going is to let loose a bit. Well, this was not what the German police had in mind.
There was a certain point in the act when Mick would take a large basket of flowers and throw them by the handful to an already overexcited audience. This would cause chaos every night with kids climbing over one another, trying to catch a flying bloom. Mick, realizing that this could cause severe maiming or death to innocent kids at the hands of the gestapo, took the basket and slowly walked along the front of the stage, placing a rose down the barrel of each policeman’s gun. He then turned back along the line and gave a flower to each one, pointing at the kid he was to give it to. In one stroke, he managed to compromise the police and dispel the tension that had built up in the hall purely as a result of their aggression. The policemen giving out the flowers soon began to enjoy it and pretty soon they were no different than the kids in the audience. There is no doubt that the economics student from Dartford would have made a wonderful diplomat if his career as a singer had not worked out. I was extremely glad to leave Germany a few days later, and I have to say I have no intention of returning.
WITH STEPHEN WYMAN ONSTAGE DURING SOUNDCHECK FOR THE STONES’ CONCERT IN ATHENS, 1967.
• • •
The last concert of the tour was in Athens on April 18. It was sold out and took place in a rather grubby football stadium. The stage had been set up at one end of the pitch a long distance from the audience. It certainly was not an intimate atmosphere. In fact, there seemed to be a very strange atmosphere in Athens altogether. However, the stands were packed and the band did a fantastic job of overcoming the distance between them and the audience. Mick working harder than ever to give them a night to remember. Which, as it turned out, they certainly got.
The show was going really well and the audience was having a ball until it came to the point where Mick would normally throw the basket of flowers into the crowd. As they were at least sixty yards away, he passed the basket to Tom Keylock, who was standing in the wings, and told him to run across the football field and throw the flowers into the audience for him.
I was standing on the pitch just in front of the stage on my own. I watched as Tom jumped from the stage and ran past me toward an increasingly excited audience. Out of nowhere came two cops who rugby-tackled Tom, bringing him to the ground with a massive thump, and started to drag him off, the wind knocked out of him and his broken glasses splayed halfway round his face.
I instinctively ran toward him to try and peel the cops off but got no more than a couple of paces before I fell to the same fate. Two policemen, one with his pistol drawn, picked me up and carried me toward the huge wooden gates on the perimeter of the stadium. Before I knew it, they were opened and I was deposited unceremoniously into the street. The gates slamming shut behind me. All hell let loose in the stadium. The crowd went berserk and began to riot when they saw what the police were up to. Apparently, while Tom and I were being removed, the officer in charge mounted the stage and demanded that the power be turned off and the concert stopped. Keith, seeing Tom Keylock flattened, and having his amp die on him in mid-groove, apparently took his guitar and set about the guy with it. How he got away with it, I will never know. Meanwhile, I was left standing outside in a deserted street, thinking, Blimey, that was a bit over-the-top, while trying to get my bearings and remember the name of the hotel so I could get a cab back to the safety of my room.
Bill Wyman and I had decided that, as the gig in Athens was the last of the tour, we would stay on for a week’s holiday. I was awakened the following morning by a phone call from Tony Calder at Immediate Records telling me that I had to return to London at once, as the Small Faces had studio time booked at Olympic Studios that evening and there was no way they could move the session. I rang Bill in his room and apologized for my sudden departure and, wishing him a pleasant holiday, left for the airport.
While waiting in a queue to go through passport control, a small man in a suit and open-necked shirt standing behind me asked if I had enjoyed my time in Athens, to which I replied, “Not particularly.” He then asked if I had any money on me. I replied that it was none of his business. He then informed me that in fact it was his business, as he worked for the Greek Customs and Excise, and asked me to follow him. Whereupon I was escorted to the office of his chief to be interrogated.
I was invited to take a seat in a chair opposite an elderly, somewhat disheveled man, who sat behind a large desk in a room that looked like it hadn’t seen a cleaner for some years. He began quite pleasantly, asking how long I had been in Athens and about the purpose of my very quick visit, the answers to which he already knew. He then turned to the question of money. It seemed that the Stones, minus Bill, had left on an earlier flight and had been searched unsuccessfully for the proceeds of the previous night’s concert. Th
e Greek government was anxious to prevent the substantial fee that the Stones had received from leaving the country. He was quite convinced that I was a member of the band and that I must be carrying the dosh. Fortunately for me, I had a stack of 8 x 10 photos of the band in my briefcase, so, by pointing to each one in turn, I was able to convince him that I was not one of them. They searched me and my luggage and reluctantly sent me on my way to London. I later found out that it had been arranged for a straight guy in a suit and tie from the band’s agent’s office in London to fly in on the night of the concert, collect the money, and leave on the first flight out that day, having changed the drachmas into U.S. dollars on the black market.
I got back to London, went straight to the studio and did the session with the Small Faces, finishing in the early hours. I woke up the next morning and turned on the radio to get the news, only to discover that there had been a coup d’état in Greece. The army was out in force with tanks on the streets and a twenty-four-hour curfew. Poor old Bill was locked in his hotel for a week with his son Stephen and his girlfriend Astrid, and never got his well-earned holiday. While I’d had a lucky escape back to London to an all-night session with Small Faces. No wonder there had been a strange atmosphere in Athens the day before it all kicked off.
• • •
1967 was quite manic. Before I went on the Stones tour I did sessions for an album with Chris Farlowe, Vashti, Del Shannon, the Stones, and Small Faces. I got to record a massive hit, “Friday on My Mind,” with The Easybeats, a hugely successful band from Australia, with Shel Talmy producing. Then it was straight in with Brian Jones, who had been asked to do the music for a German murder movie called Mord und Totschlag that his ex-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg was starring in.
While waiting for everyone to assemble in one of the many featureless hotel lobbies on the road in England, Brian came and sat next to me and struck up a conversation. This in itself was a rare thing, as he and I had never really got on. He had agreed to write the music for the film and, having never done it before, was feeling insecure. So he was forced to try and bury the hatchet with me, as evidently I was the only person he felt could help him through the process. After a lengthy conversation, where we were both quite honest and got a lot said, I ended up feeling quite sorry for him, and knowing that he definitely had the ability to pull it off, agreed to help him out. I don’t remember much about the sessions other than we got Jimmy Page to come and play some amazing guitar during the murder scene and that the German director was thrilled with the end result. After the Stones tour and the session with the Small Faces, it was straight off to the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Brian’s movie, then back to London for more sessions with The Easybeats, Jon Mark, Del Shannon, Johnny Hallyday, The Nice, P. P. Arnold, Marianne Faithfull, The Move, The Fortunes, more Small Faces, and many all-nighters with the Stones, a couple of trips to Madrid and one to New York, and somehow I still found the time to get married.
MARIANNE FAITHFULL SESSION AT DECCA STUDIOS, HAMPSTEAD. HAVING A DISCUSSION WITH MICK JAGGER AND THE ARRANGER, ARTHUR GREENSLADE.
WITH MICK AND PAUL MCCARTNEY AT THE MARIANNE FAITHFULL SESSIONS. THE SECOND GUY ON THE RIGHT IN THE FIRST PICTURE IS TERRY JOHNSON.
Children of the Future, Part One, 1968
While on a trip to California in January 1997, I returned to the Fillmore in San Francisco for the first time in thirty years. I was there to see my son Ethan playing with Brendan Benson, an artist he produced, who was opening for Tom Petty. On arrival, I was taken by my pal Mick Brigden, who ran Bill Graham Management, straight to a box in the balcony. As I looked down on the auditorium it brought back a flood of memories. Standing watching Joe Cocker and the Grease Band and feeling a hand on my shoulder, turning round to see a small figure with fuzzy hair, spectacles, and the warmest smile. “Hi, I’m Jerry Garcia, I just wanted to come over and shake your hand.” What a compliment!
The first time I went there was to see the Steve Miller Band perform in 1968. After the gig, Steve took me over to meet the infamous Bill Graham, the proprietor and the most famous promoter of rock and roll in America. He was sitting at a table in the bar, in the cold neon light that makes everyone want to leave after a show. He was in a very bad mood, and being singularly unimpressed by the introduction, made it quite clear that he was in no mood for polite conversation. I took an instant dislike to him and this impression was to remain with me for many years, until I met him under completely different circumstances and came to realize what an exceptional man he was. If you want a great read you should get his book, written with Robert Greenfield, called Bill Graham Presents. It is a fascinating autobiography of an extraordinary man.
In March of that year I got my first break as a producer. Steve Miller came to England with his band to make his debut album, Children of the Future, for Capitol Records.
A few weeks earlier I had received a call from a Harvey Kornspan of San Francisco. He said that he managed the Steve Miller Band, who were completely unknown at that time. He described the band as being heavily influenced by Chicago blues and had just signed them to Capitol with supposedly the biggest deal ever done by any label. It was their intention to come to England on the QE2 and record their album at Olympic Studios with me as the engineer and Steve Miller producing. Harvey sounded like a really nice guy but the most unlikely manager, and although it all sounded a bit hippy-dippy to me, he convinced me to accept the booking.
They duly arrived, and what an odd, somewhat disheveled assortment of road crew, musicians, girlfriends, Harvey Kornspan and a pregnant wife they were. Having rented a large house in Belgravia, they all moved in, without much ado, as one big happy family.
One evening a few days later, I got a call from the pregnant wife from, of all places, the Chelsea police station. She was in a terrible state. They had all been arrested and were to appear in magistrates’ court the following morning, charged with importing drugs and possession of a dangerous firearm, and could I present myself at the court at 9:30 sharp to both guarantee their good character and, more importantly, stand bail while the great and good Harvey Kornspan sorted the whole messy business out. I began to wonder what I had got myself involved with. A bunch of drug-taking, armed American hippies?
If I went the following morning, it would be much against my own better judgment. Did I really want to be seen associating with these people, let alone stand up in court and vouch for their good characters? Suppose it got in the press. What would my mother think? When I showed some reticence, she pleaded with me, saying I was the only person they knew in the country. When that didn’t do the trick, she said that she did not know what the stress of another night in a cell might do to her condition, adding that they were innocent and the whole matter could be explained.
I turned up in court the following morning in my best suit and accent. I spoke up for the even more disheveled and wretched (after a night in Chelsea nick) group, and was required by the court to stand surety for their good behavior for the remainder of their stay in the United Kingdom.
It transpired that a friend of the band in America had taken pity on them and, imagining that drugs would not be available in London, took it upon himself to send a large fruitcake through the mail, the middle of which had been stuffed full of hash. Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise discovered the drugs at the port of entry and allowed the cake to be delivered by mail as normal, alerting the local police who raided the house within minutes of its arrival. During their search of the premises they discovered a flare pistol, hanging as decoration on the wall in one of the rooms. It belonged to the owner of the house and, if I remember, did not even work. But the good old English bobby, determined to make the situation look as bad as possible for these undesirables, foolishly accused them of owning a dangerous firearm. As to the drugs charges, they too were dropped when it was pointed out that it could not be proved the band had any way of knowing what was inside a parcel that had been sent by a third
party.
After this, we all became the best of friends. I felt sorry for them, for the experience they’d had, and they in turn were extremely grateful to me for helping to get them out of jail. It was certainly the strangest start to a working relationship. Boz Scaggs, Lonnie Turner, Tim Davis, and I were to remain extremely close friends for many years after we had stopped working with Steve Miller, and my first impression of Harvey was borne out. He was nothing but polite and supportive to me during the entire time I knew him.
After one month of the allotted six weeks recording, we had absolutely nothing worth keeping on tape. Steve had spent the entire time experimenting with different ideas of songs, arrangements, and recording techniques, all without success. It became obvious to me that he was no ordinary musician and that he was after something very different, but was in danger of losing the trust and respect of the band as well as the services of his engineer if something did not change fairly quickly. So I sat him down and explained very nicely that I could see little point in continuing the sessions for the remaining two weeks, and unless something changed I was going to quit. He asked me what I thought was wrong and I told him that he needed a producer, as no one seemed to be in charge or was prepared to make any decisions and that the project had the demeanor of a headless chicken. He accepted what I had to say most graciously and asked if I would be prepared to stay on if I were to become the producer.
At last. Finally someone had actually asked me to produce. It was like being let out of a cage. It was unheard of for an engineer to go on to produce. The two professions were viewed as being totally separate. This was a clearly defined class system that I had long felt should be broken down.
